Radeon R6xx/R7xx 3D register reference guide released

[Posted January 27, 2009 by corbet]

From:		Alex Deucher <alexdeucher-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w-AT-public.gmane.org>
To:		xorg list <xorg-PD4FTy7X32lNgt0PjOBp9y5qC8QIuHrW-AT-public.gmane.org>, xorg-driver-ati <xorg-driver-ati-go0+a7rfsptAfugRpC6u6w-AT-public.gmane.org>, radeonhd <radeonhd-stAJ6ESoqRxg9hUCZPvPmw-AT-public.gmane.org>
Subject:		Radeon R6xx/R7xx 3D Register Reference Guide
Date:		Mon, 26 Jan 2009 19:41:58 -0500
Message-ID:		<a728f9f90901261641v458c259rd17cd20e12eaa6f1@mail.gmail.com>
Archive‑link:		Article

AMD is pleased to announce the release of a 3D register reference
guide for Radeon 6xx/7xx chips.

The guide will be available in the usual places:
http://www.x.org/docs/AMD/R6xx_3D_Registers.pdf
and
http://ati.amd.com/developer/open_gpu_documentation.html

If you have any development related questions please ask at
gpudriverdevsupport-7JSPXK3qpWk@public.gmane.org

Alex Deucher
AMD GPG
alexander.deucher-5C7GfCeVMHo@public.gmane.org
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to post comments

Radeon R6xx/R7xx 3D register reference guide released

Posted Jan 27, 2009 16:47 UTC (Tue) by mmcgrath (guest, #44906) [Link] (4 responses)

I found it surprisingly difficult to walk in to a Best Buy or the now late Circuit City and find a card that would "just work" in Linux. I refused to buy nvidia because I'd been an nvidia guy for the last many years and I just got tired of the voodoo I had to do to my machine to get the cards to work right.

I did end up getting a radeon and while some features are missing, it does work without much trickery. I'm happy to hear these reference guides will be released so the radeon drivers can be made even better.

I like to think that us Free software people are very vendor loyal, I know I try to be. I look forward to purchasing more ATI/AMD stuff in the future

/me really was not paid to say the above :)

Radeon R6xx/R7xx 3D register reference guide released

Posted Jan 27, 2009 17:26 UTC (Tue) by stumbles (guest, #8796) [Link] (2 responses)

Really? I cannot accurately remember the last time I had to conjure some voodoo to get a Nvidia card working. Perhaps it is due to using their latest drivers, the distro I am using. I don't know. I just know Nvidia has always been less painful in many areas to get up and running, and with current version of X it is has been a near brainless activity for me.

Radeon R6xx/R7xx 3D register reference guide released

Posted Jan 27, 2009 18:02 UTC (Tue) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link]

There seem to be a lot of configurations with problems, although the nvidia drivers work great for many, too. As usual, you get to keep all the pieces if something breaks.

Especially support for older cards is fading - there are 4 release series from nvidia for different sets of cards, which already tells the story that they are not able to support everything properly. Of course the older ones of those series seem to have less support when new kernel / X releases are done, it's a bit of a guesswork.

I have access to one machine with Geforce FX 5700 card, and none of the drivers work really properly for basic compiz + games + video stuff. I hope Nouveau [http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/] will save NVIDIA users before the support fades completely away for older cards.

Radeon R6xx/R7xx 3D register reference guide released

Posted Jan 27, 2009 18:07 UTC (Tue) by Quazatron (guest, #4368) [Link]

It's not so much the voodoo I find annoying, it's the instability that binary drivers cause.

Systems where I use binary drivers (nvidia or ati) to be able to play 3D games will crash as much as Windows. The cause is usually some interaction between OpenGL, video overlay and Compiz. I don't even try to do more advanced stuff like multi-head or tv-out.

On the other hand, if I stick to default open-source drivers, thing hardly ever go sour. So I've been avoiding nvidia like the plague, and stayed with Intel for basic desktop with compiz, and Ati for 3D gaming.

This is good news, it means I backed the right horse for once :-)

Radeon R6xx/R7xx 3D register reference guide released

Posted Jan 29, 2009 0:19 UTC (Thu) by proski (guest, #104) [Link]

It's actually hard to buy a compatible video card anywhere if you want accelerated Linux framebuffer with support for widescreen displays, native X11 support, proper switching between X11 and the console, PCI Express compatibility, DVI output and no moving parts. I'm not even talking about 3D acceleration.

Radeon R6xx/R7xx 3D register reference guide released

Posted Jan 27, 2009 17:13 UTC (Tue) by JungleJazz (guest, #56346) [Link] (1 responses)

This is great news. It is now straight forward to purchase an off-the-shelf graphics card and know you will have access to free 3D software drivers. This means it will work out of the box, work when the kernel upgrades, and continue working for the life of the hardware.

Radeon R6xx/R7xx 3D register reference guide released

Posted Jan 28, 2009 16:10 UTC (Wed) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]

It's probably a bit soon to say that you'd be able to get your off-the-shelf card to work when you get home; just because they've released the documentation doesn't mean the documentation is sufficient to write drivers with, or that the documentation is necessarily at all accurate. Generally, these things take a certain amount of people trying to write a drivers with a different design that the driver(s) developed internally and reporting inconsistencies and gaps before the documentation is really right. Of course, it's only a matter of time, but that won't help if you were hoping to run out to Circuit City before it's gone and verify that your new graphics card works in a Linux computer in time to exchange it at the store if you got a defective one.